


Bones of Contention

by misura



Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Community: slashfest, Gen, M/M, pre-book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's one thing they've always known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bones of Contention

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted August 2006

There were, of course, rules. Or perhaps it would be more correct to say that there were things that were understood, silently, without either of them needing to say them out loud. There weren't a great many of them, really, a handful, perhaps, if you were inclined to be generous.

One, actually, if you were inclined to be precise and count things.

And that one rule, the one thing that they both knew and understood and never mentioned was this:

 _Shadow loved his wife._

 

Lyesmith didn't talk much about his family, if he had one. Shadow assumed he did, and just didn't want to talk about them, the way Shadow would sometimes not want to talk about Laura and how wonderful she looked and smelled. In prison, you didn't push people; Shadow didn't ask, Lyesmith didn't tell, and it would be only much later (less than a year) that Shadow'd meet some members of Lyesmith's family. The experience would, in the end, not leave him all that eager to meet more of them, but that was neither here nor now, and not important at all at this point in time.

Once, Lyesmith mentioned a name. Shadow would remember that day for a while (more than a year) because it was also the day on which he first spotted the book about the coin-tricks in the prison-library. He thought it was strange then; there seemed little point in reading a book about how to do tricks with coins if you didn't have any coins to do tricks with.

"It's 'cause people just get so fuckin' bored in here, that's why," Lyesmith said, when Shadow mentioned the book to him. "Or else it's someone's idea of a bad joke. Like letting us buy calendars with pictures of birds. As if we're ever going to see any of those little buggers in this place."

Shadow rather thought that was the point, actually; even the people outside of the prison wouldn't ever get close enough to a real European nightingale to see all the colour of its chest-feathers, but thanks to that calendar, they'd be able to imagine that they could. The birds on the picture would never fly away, or fly into a window and drop dead on someone's front-porch. You couldn't hear them sing, true, only that was the only drawback. (And who in America lived somewhere where he'd be able to hear birds singing in the morning, instead of traffic picking up?)

He didn't say any of this to Lyesmith though. There'd be no sense; Lyesmith had his opinion and Shadow had his, and that was that. No need to make anything of it.

A few days later, they had to construct bird-feeders again. The work was simple enough that Shadow allowed himself to get distracted, wondering if any European nightingale would ever profit from his labors here. For some reason, he rather doubted it, although he supposed it had to be possible.

 

Lyesmith's wife was called Sigourney. Shadow thought it was a nice name, less unusual than Low Key, yet with that same sense of ... somethingness. In a very weird way, the name fitted. It felt _right_.

Shadow never got to meet Sigourney, or even see her. Lyesmith didn't carry any pictures of her, though he did have a picture of a young man that he showed to Shadow.

"My biggest fan, this kiddo. Should have drowned him at birth." Lyesmith shook his head.

Shadow politely kept from saying anything, though privately, he wondered how the young man was related to Lyesmith. His son, perhaps? The age-difference seemed very small, even if Lyesmith might look young for his age, and the young man might look older than he was. He looked dangerous, too, in some indefinable way. Hungry. Shadow stared at his eyes and was reminded of a wolf - not the ones you could see on National Geographic, but the ones from the faerietales, like Little Red Riding Hood. The ones who'd eat up your grandmother and dress up in her clothes for a chance to get you, too.

Lyesmith put the picture away again after a while, still muttering.

"There's just no justice anymore in this world, know what I mean? Everything's just going to Hell. Kids don't respect their parents these days."

Shadow thought of Laura, of how a child of her and him might look like. It seemed a very hard, near-impossible thing to do: raising a child, teaching someone everything you knew ... hoping it'd turn out all right and not repeat the mistakes you yourself had made.

"You sound like an old man," Shadow said. It was true, too; old people always talked as if the whole world had been better in their youth. They never assumed it was their own fault that things had changed, or that maybe everything seemed harder to do because their bodies had grown old and worn out. Shadow didn't feel old or worn out. The world outside might not be perfect, but it was good enough for him. Laura was somewhere out there, waiting for her puppy to come home.

"Fuck you," Lyesmith said. "What do you know, anyway? You haven't even read Herodotus."

Shadow didn't say he had, or at least the first three chapters of the book he'd borrowed from Lyesmith. He didn't think that was really what Lyesmith wanted to hear.

 

Lyesmith didn't wear a wedding-ring.

Shadow supposed he had to have noticed this before, but somehow, it had always slipped his attention, perhaps because Lyesmith talked about his wife so very little; it was almost as if she didn't exist, as if Lyesmith had just made her up, or maybe as if Shadow had only imagined her. He didn't know what she looked like, after all. She was like Herodotus, only less real, because Shadow had a book with Herodotus' name on it, to prove he'd been alive.

True, there were times when Shadow didn't feel like talking about Laura. Some memories, he didn't want to relive or share in a place like the prison. They were theirs, his and Laura's. They were good memories, the kind that kept him going on bad days.

On some days, Shadow wondered what kept Lyesmith going, what cheered him up when it seemed like the week would never end. (It did, eventually, of course, only to be followed by another week, that seemed just as endless as the one that had come before.)

Shadow didn't have the illusion that it was him. Lyesmith talked to him more than to other people, true, but that meant about as much as the one thing they didn't talk about.

Trying to get closer to understanding Lyesmith, Shadow decided, was a bit like trying to practice a coin-trick without an actual coin; it wasn't exactly impossible, but it wasn't easy, and it probably wouldn't be worth the bother.

(Once Lyesmith had been transferred, of course, Shadow was able to practice much better, because he had a coin then, and was cautious enough to not get caught with it.)


End file.
